Best movies like Promise: The Nabari Poisoned Wine Case, The Life of a Death-row Inmate
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Promise: The Nabari Poisoned Wine Case, The Life of a Death-row Inmate Starring Shinobu Terajima, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kirin Kiki, Shizuo Amano, and more. If you liked Promise: The Nabari Poisoned Wine Case, The Life of a Death-row Inmate then you may also like: 12 Angry Men, Night Court, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Black and White, Caged and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Masaru Okunishi is a prisoner who has been on death-row for over 40 years. In 1961, 5 women died from drinking poisoned wine in a small village gathering in Nabari City in Mie Prefecture. After his arrest, he appealed his innocence on the grounds that the police coerced his confession. He was found not guilty in the first trial. However, it was overturned and he received a death sentence in the second trial, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1972. Since then, Okunishi has continuously appealed for retrial, fighting against the horror of capital punishment. This TV dramatization of the Nabari Poisoned Wine Case depicts Okunishi in an isolated cell, his mother’s unwavering belief in his innocence, and the effort of people who have rallied to Okunishi’s defense.
You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.
Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list
Night Court
A corrupt night court judge tears an innocent young family apart in his efforts to elude a special prosecutor.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
A newspaper publisher, wanting to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence, talks his possible son-in-law Tom into a hoax in an attempt to expose ineptitude of the city's hard-line district attorney. The plan is to have Tom plant clues leading to his arrest for killing a female nightclub dancer. Once Tom is found guilty, he is to reveal the setup and humiliate the DA.
Black and White
Australia, 1958. When a nine year old white girl is found murdered, police are quick to arrest illiterate Aborigine, Max Stuart. Under interrogation Max admits to the killing. With a legal system compromised by intimidation tactics, the skills of his two gifted but naïve defense lawyers are put to the test.
The Case of Charles Peace
Charles Peace leads a double life, by day he's a respected local businessman, but by night he's a professional thief who stops at nothing, not even murder, to get what he wants.
The Chamber
Idealistic young attorney Adam Hall takes on the death row clemency case of his racist grandfather, Sam Cayhall, a former Ku Klux Klan member he has never met.
Dead Man Walking
A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.
In Cold Blood
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.
Stir Crazy
New Yorkers Skip Donahue and Harry Monroe have no jobs and no prospects, so they decide to flee the city and find work elsewhere, landing jobs wearing woodpecker costumes to promote the opening of a bank. When their feathery costumes are stolen and used in a bank robbery, they no longer have to worry about employment — they're sent to prison.
The Paradine Case
Attorney Anthony Keane agrees to represent Londonite Mrs. Paradine, who has been fingered in her husband's murder. From the start, the married lawyer is drawn to the enigmatic beauty, and he begins to cast about for a way to exonerate his client. Keane puts the Paradine household servant on the stand, suggesting he is the killer. But Keane soon loses his way in the courtroom, and his half-baked plan sets off a stunning chain of events.
Killing for Love
Derek and Nancy Haysom were brutally murdered in their house in Lynchburg, Virginia, on March 30, 1985. Suspicion fell on their daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend Jens Söring. They flee to Europe, but are caught and extradited to the U.S. Elizabeth is sentenced to 90 years in jail for incitement to murder, Jens Söring to two life sentences. Karin Steinberger, Marcus Vetter and their team spent over three years researching this case, which achieved world-wide notoriety. They uncovered new evidence, including the fact none of the blood samples found at the scene of the crime belonged to Jens Söring.
I Want to Live!
Barbara Graham is a woman with dubious moral standards, often a guest in seedy bars. She has been sentenced for some petty crimes. Two men she knows murder an older woman. When they get caught they start to think that Barbara has helped the police arresting them. As a revenge they tell the police that Barbara is the murderer.
Let Him Have It
In 1950s England, slow-witted Derek Bentley falls in with a group of petty criminals led by Chris Craig, a teenager with a fondness for American gangster films. Chris and Derek's friendship leads to their involvement in the true case which would forever shake England's belief in capital punishment.
Swing Vote
A newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice must settle a controversial moral and legal dilemma with his tie-breaking decision which may also have serious implications on his own family's harmony.
Too Young to Die
An abused 15 year old is charged with a murder that carries the death penalty in this fact-based story.
Town Without Pity
Four American soldiers stationed near a German village face death in the rape of a local girl and are defended by outside counsel Major Steve Grant.
Flaxy Martin
Attorney Walter Colby has ties to the mob, but he begins to regret his criminal affiliations. When his girlfriend, showgirl Flaxy Martin, who also has shady connections, becomes a suspect in a murder, Walter takes the fall. However, on his way to prison, he escapes, determined to bring the real killer to justice.
A Hidden Life
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.
A Covenant with Death
An innocent man is found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but as he's about to be hanged he accidentally kills his executioner. He now faces a new trial, presided over by a young and inexperienced judge.
Anatomy of a Psycho
The crazed brother of a condemned killer sent to the gas chamber swears vengeance on those he holds responsible for his brother's execution.
The Loving Story
This documentary film tells the dramatic story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple living in Virginia in the 1950s, and their landmark Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia, that changed history.
The Electric Chair
The murder of an innocent, happy couple leads to a courtroom trial that would sentence the killer to death, but who really did it?
The Man Who Dared
A crusading reporter plans his own arrest and conviction for first degree murder, trying to show that the death sentence should be outlawed when based on circumstantial evidence alone, but his plan goes awry.
Family of Strangers
Three patients of different backgrounds, illnesses and stages are being treated at a psychiatric clinic in Nagano Prefecture. Their cases range from the criminal to merely asocial. That should be that, but soon matters take a darker turn when a corpse turns up and a murder has occurred. The culprit fingered is one of the patients.
I Just Didn't Do It
A young man is falsely accused of molesting a high-school girl on a train. He is arrested and charged, and goes through endless court sessions, all the while insisting that he is innocent.
Last Rites
A man is executed in the electric chair for having killed several women, but due to lightning striking a transformer at the moment of execution, he survives. As soon as he's well, however, they plan to electrocute him again, but now he has become a changed man and the female criminal psychiatrist attributes it to the electrocution wiping out certain brain cells.
Deadlocked
A young man is accused of rape and murder and placed on trial. His father doesn't believe that he is guilty, so in act of desperation he grabs the bailiff's guns and takes the whole jury hostage and insists that the prosecuting attorney re-investigates the crime that his son's accused of.
The Amanda Knox Saga
Amanda Knox served four years in an Italian prison for the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007, always insisting on her innocence. In 2011, she was acquitted on the basis of DNA evidence but prosecutors successfully appealed and her acquittal was struck down. In 2014 she was again found guilty in absentia after a retrial and sentenced to 28 years and six months in jail. The saga came to and end when Italy's highest court overturned the convictions of Ms Knox and her former boyfriend, Italian student Raffaele Sollecito in March 2015. Known burglar Rudy Guede was arrested a short time later following the discovery of his bloodstained fingerprints on Kercher's possessions. He was later found guilty of murder in a fast-track trial and is currently (as of 2019) serving a 16-year prison sentence.
I Want to Be a Shellfish
Television production of I Want to Be a Shellfish. On a post-war peaceful day in Japan, Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber as well as a good father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder. According to the accusation by GHQ, Toyomatsu "attemped to kill a US prisoner", which was nothing but an order by his superior and failed after all with hurting the prisoner by weak Toyomatsu. Also, Toyomatsu was driven to corner at the trial by the fact that he fed the US prisoner some burdock roots to nourish him. Toyomatsu believes nothing but being not guilty, but he is sentenced to death by hanging. Prior to the execution, Toyomatsu writes a long farewell letter to his family, the wife and the only son: "If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more.... Oh yes, I would like to be...a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea."
12 Angry Men
The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.